Aging measure may improve disease prediction in veterans
A blood-based aging measure increased predictive performance by 0.01 to 0.81 when added to clinical markers and other risk factors in 2,062 veterans.
Limit: Disease prevention from care guided by the aging measure was not measured
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
An observational cohort study followed 2,062 US military veterans initially free of diabetes, heart and blood vessel disease, and chronic kidney disease. They averaged 37.2 years old, and 78.6% were men. Researchers used chemical marks on DNA in blood samples to estimate the pace of biological aging.
Over an average of 14.1 years, electronic health records showed that 24.7% developed at least one of these diseases. Faster measured aging remained associated with disease onset after accounting for standard clinical markers. Adding the aging measure to clinical markers, demographics, smoking and alcohol use improved the model’s ability to distinguish people who developed disease from those who did not. A score measuring this ability increased by 0.01 to 0.81.
Why it matters
The authors suggest that assessing biological aging could help identify people who might benefit from preventive efforts to delay diabetes, heart and blood vessel disease, or chronic kidney disease.
Caveats
This observational study tested prediction, not whether using the measure to guide preventive care delays disease. Participants were mostly male US veterans and were all non-Hispanic Black or non-Hispanic White, limiting generalization to other populations.
- Epigenetic regulation of gene expression
- Cardiometabolic disease
- Blood pressure
- Body mass index
- DunedinPACE
- Humans
The paper
Using a Biomarker of Biological Aging to Predict Incident Cardiometabolic Disease
Georgetown University
Journal of the American Heart Association, Jun 23, 2026, Open access